FINLAND ADVANCES THE CLOCK

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 134, 3 December 1938, Page 26

FINLAND ADVANCES THE CLOCK

IT was a Finnish film which decided me about Finland—a film with Finnish actors, Finnish directors, Finnish songs; with a plot laid in Karelia, that beautiful and romantic province of eastern Finland. So vividly were the scenes portrayed, so real the acting, so utterly unlike the stereotyped peasant scenes of American and English, films, that I could not resist the urge to visit the place.

Nor was I disappointed. Finland is a stage, a vast natural stage, twice the size of this country, where the scenes change so rapidly, yet so impercept-

ibly, that you quickly lose count. And the characters? The 3,800,000 inhabitants? For all the world they look like players straight from the make-up room. But with this difference: the make-up is no make-up, but everyday custom. The rough beards, the ■ semi-cowboy hats, the great, clumping knee-boots, the swaggering gait, the dramatic emphasis which punctuates every remark: those are but everyday habits of this littleknown though highly respected people.

There is a spontaneous friendliness about the Finns which touches the

Russia had held the country in subjection. For six hundred years the Swedes sat on Finland's doorstep, implanting their culture, their language, their Christian faith, their learning. In 1809 the Swedes lost Finland to Russia, and the country slipped from the frying-pan clean into the flames. Tyranny, lawlessness, bloodshed, and atrocities became the rule of the day. The curfew was introduced, and the whip, in the brutal hands of the Russian police, wrought a misery that the Finns will be long in forgetting. Siberia remained always open for those who disapproved.

Today, all is changed. With dynamic energy the Finns have spent twenty years putting their country in order, and have succeeded admirably. Once, when you asked the direction to a certain quarter in Helsingfors, the reply invariably was, "Keep going in that direction until you feel a knife slide in between your shoulder blades; when that happens, you're right there." Even respectable citizens would never venture outside without a knife on their person. But not now: Finland has emerged from her grim days. However well impressed one may be

heart of any stranger. Take the first person I met in Helsingfors, for example. He was a stranger, an absolute stranger of whom I inquired the direction to the main street, Alexanderkatu. I spoke Swedish. He replied

Written tor "The Post" by H. E. A. HILLE

in that language, with the peculiar sing-song accent of the Swedish-speak-ing Finn. "Oh, you're a Swede, aren't you?" I smiled. "Not quite. I study in Sweden, but I come from down under, New Zealand." With this admission, the city was laid at my feet. Had I seen this, and that, and everything else about the Finnish capital? No? Then might he show me around? And show me around he did. Everything that was to be seen in Helsingfors, from the new Olympic Stadium to a Finnish steam bath. He paid. "If I should, come to New Zealand you may show me around; but here, you are the guest, and I do the paying." His naive remark made all my efforts to pay for our entertainment quite useless. And that is Finland. Not an isolated case, but a typical example of the remarkable hospitality offered the stranger, whoever he be, whoever he may meet. But if the people are remarkable, the country itself is no less striking. "Suomi, the land of a thousand lakes," the Finns like to call it. Only that expression does little justice to the numerous other attractions. The vast silent pine forests; the silver birch, the rolling pastures, the thousands of acres of wheat lands reaching down into the Gulf of Bothnia, and the Arctic tundra of the north, the bare wild region of the Lapps and reindeer. Finland has some sixty thousand lakes, but it is erroneous to imagine that there is nojthing else, or that the country is "just another of those minor (and backward) European countries." It is not: in fact, it is one of the most advanced. Helsingfors is as modern a city as one^would find anywhere, and considerably cleaner. It is somewhat larger than Auckland, very progressive, and rapidly gaining renown throughout Europe for its distinctive architecture. In Viborg, the second city, with a population similar to Dunedin, there is a public library which would make any city in this Dominion blush. Tammerfors, the third city, is considered the cleanest manufacturing city in the whole of Europe.

Twenty years ago, Finland was smouldering ruins, just emerging from three months' civil war, and free for the first time for more than seven hundred years. First Sweden, then

with the development of Finnish cities one cannot overlook the essential basis of Finnish economic life—the countryside: the thousands or more miles of virgin forest, from the Gulf of Finland right up into the Arctic. And it is the people who work on this forest, the lumbermen and sawmillers, and the people who work on the cleared areas, the small farmers and dairymen, who are the real backbone of the country. It is they who supply the greater number of Finland's recordbreaking athletes; it is their life which forms the background of Finland's rapidly growing literature; their folk songs which have inspired Sibelius and other notable Finnish composers.

Finland is moving the clock forward rapidly, consistently, and one feels confident that the Olympic Games will fall but evenly into the stride of an energetic people who spell progress with a capital "P."

Impressions of the Land of the Olympics